Superheroes Anonymous (2 page)

 

Chapter Two

“W
HAT KIND OF
douchebag dumps somebody in the hospital?” Portia McPeak licked foam off of her thumb, ignoring the napkin right next to her. “More importantly, what kind of girl just lets him?”

“It wasn't like that,” I said, though I couldn't exactly work up much enthusiasm to defend either one of us, not when I had the latest text from my landlord on my phone screen. Jeremy had dropped off a box of stuff with him since I was at work.

It was really over.

“Then what was it like?” Portia asked.

“The job in Miami pays better, and he hates his job here.”

“Hey, I'm on your side—­he dumped you in the hospital, and that makes him a douchebag.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I mean, so what if he's a tool, and we all think you should have dumped him years ago?”

“I take that back.” I lifted my head to glare at Portia.

Five days had passed since Jeremy had walked out on me. I'd gone back to work, sore, limping, but otherwise alive, to find that my coworkers had oh-­so-­thoughtfully saved all my work for me. So it wasn't like I had time to miss Jeremy at all. It just stung that I'd been dumped so callously.

Since Angus was out of the office on a business trip, I'd tried to sneak away for coffee at the Daily Grind to gain back a moment of sanity. Unfortunately, Portia had decided to tag along.

“I mean, I get why you didn't kick him to the curb.” Portia, with her too-­expensive bag and her designer shoes, didn't fit in with the hipster crowd at the Daily Grind. But she didn't seem to care. “He's hot. And what girl doesn't want a hot boyfriend? But, hey, now that he's out of the picture, I think I might be able to set you up with someone.”

“No way.” I picked up a sugar packet and flicked it at her, and she sniffed. “No blind dates. Ever. I'm just going to sulk and be single for a while.”

“Then who'll bring you clothes at the hospital?” Portia asked. “And before you can say me, I'm not going into a hospital unless I'm
dying.
So forget about it, Girl.”

“I'll figure out a way,” I said. “Besides, maybe I'll stop ending up in the hospital if Jeremy lets enough ­people know he's in Miami. You know all the villains think he's Blaze.”

“Because he
is,
” Portia said, rolling her eyes as though it was obviously my gamer ex-­boyfriend pulling on a superhero suit to save the city on a daily basis. “Duh.”

“So with him in Miami, I'll get a break from the kidnappings. Stranger things have happened, right?”

“To you?” Portia considered. “Not really. Remember that time Venus von Trapp turned you green?”

“Thank you for that depressing reminder of the worst two weeks of my life. I got a paper cut this morning. Would you do the honors?” I handed her the saltshaker.

Portia blinked at the saltshaker. “Huh?”

“Never mind.” I rested my head on my arms. Portia was probably the friendliest worker out of everyone in the office, and some days I wished I'd never drawn her attention, so I could drink my coffee in peace. She'd been standing next to me during one of Blaze's epic fights with Dr. Death and had subsequently ended up on the front page of the Domino. She'd been lucky: ­people who spent time around me had an equal chance of winding up on the front page or in the hospital. But Portia was too fame-­hungry to care about that.

“I'm going back,” Portia said, and I looked up. “Walk with me?”

Yes, because who knew what could happen to a long-­legged blonde in three blocks? In broad daylight? I refrained from pointing out she was safer without me, cleared my coffee cup off the table and into the trash, and followed her out though I had absolutely no desire to go back to work.

I'd been working at Mirror Reality for a ­couple of years, and while I knew I was lucky to even have a job, it wasn't a picnic. The work itself wasn't bad, but the office was stuffed with idiots. Portia could probably be considered the smartest of all of them. My boss regularly hired men and women hoping to break into print modeling by constantly putting themselves in Angus's line of sight. He found them amusing, but he knew better than to actually expect quality work out of these ­people, which meant I had to pick up the slack.

I hated my job. Every morning, I turned off the alarm clock and rolled over to stare at the window of my fourth-­story apartment. And for ten minutes, I contemplated rolling out of bed and out of that window, and not having to go to work. I even set my alarm clock back ten minutes just so that I would have time for my daily existential crisis.

Once I decided that I had too much to live for, I dragged myself out of bed and headed into the office, two hours before anybody else came in. I used the quiet to prep meeting materials, research stories, and even occasionally ghostwrite a few articles if the regular writer didn't live up to Angus's standards. My coworkers trickled in between nine and ten. They left right on the nose at five. You could set your watch by that, at least. If I was having an efficient day, I'd be out of there at seven. The earliest I'd managed in a ­couple of years was nine.

Why did I stay there? That's easy. The healthcare plan.

Angus paid for the gold plan for his employees, probably to keep the idea men and the overworked happy. Even if I tried to find another job at this point, the insurance company would have taken one look at my record and burst out laughing.

I don't ask to get kidnapped. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, I'd prefer if the villains focused on something else. One of them—­I think it might have been a mind reader—­got it into his head that Jeremy is Blaze, savior of Chicago. And even though I'd been insisting for over eighteen months that there was no way my boyfriend was Blaze, everybody insisted right back. So, ­people asked, why were Jeremy and Blaze never been seen in the same place? Because Jeremy was usually at his computer, playing games. How come Blaze came to save me every time? He must be a nice guy, but I assure you, he's not Jeremy.

So I stayed for the health care. And I think Angus knew it. He was the first to start calling me Girl instead of Gail after the media named me Hostage Girl. Others followed suit, no matter how many times I insisted that it was Gail. Gail from Nowhere, Indiana.

When Portia and I strolled back into the seventh-­floor offices of Mirror Reality, the receptionist was already mid-­fit. “There you are!” she said.

“It was just a coffee run. Don't worry so much, Adrianna.” Portia barely glanced up from her phone as we walked through. Angus insisted that the front office be kept spartan and minimal, so there was only the coatrack, two chairs, and Adrianna's desk. Which was mostly empty anyway, usually of Adrianna herself. “What can I do for you?”

“Not you.” Adrianna waved her away. With an affronted look, Portia stalked off, and Adrianna turned toward me. “Angus has been calling for the past half hour.
Why
did you pick today of all days to leave?”

I refrained from pointing out that I was legally allowed to take breaks. “What does he want?”

“He's got a meeting with Edward,” Adrianna said, grabbing my arm.

I raised my eyebrows. “Gonna need more than that. Who's Edward?”

“
Davenport.
Edward Davenport!” Adrianna practically melted back into herself before she remembered that I didn't care. “He wants the entire office prepped, and with Guy leaving today, you're it.”

“I'm taking a meeting with Edward Davenport?” I blinked. Edward Davenport, CEO of Davenport Industries, was practically a celebrity in Chicago. And why not? He had the smashing good looks of a movie lead, the brains to tackle the country's top law school at nineteen, a tragic past, and the world's formidable most company behind him.

“Not you.” Adrianna rolled her eyes. “Guy and Asiv are, but the meeting room, it's a wreck and—­”

“Get the cleaning crew up here, then,” I said. “That's not my job. If Angus wants to meet with Edward Davenport, he'll want all the materials prepped. I need to start that.”

“He's going to be here at three!” Adrianna looked frantic at the thought. “The maintenance staff takes
hours,
and I'll never get the office cleaned in time. You know how hopeless I am with cleaning products—­we always kept a maid.”

“Get somebody to help,” I said.

“But what about the phones?”

“Have one of the McClavens do it.”

“You know they hate that.”

“What's this? It appears my well of compassion has dried right up. He pays them, they can answer the phones for an hour. I have to prep the materials.”

On cue, the phone rang. “Oh, that'll be Angus,” Adrianna said, fluttering her hands worriedly. Yes, she actually fluttered her hands. Like an old-­time movie actress.

I waved a hand at her. “Send it back to me. He wants to talk to me, anyway.” And with that, I trudged the familiar path to my cubicle.

“Girl!” Angus's European accent (I'd never been able to quite place its source) thundered through the handset. “Where have you been?”

“On the phone with a potential client,” I lied as I sat down behind my cluttered desk.

“I'm sure. Have Adrianna get fresh coffee—­use the corporate account, don't put it on the company card until we teach that idiot in accounting how to actually pay the bill—­and have it waiting, and hot, precisely at three. We'll need the sales packet for the millennium clients, not that piddly one you put together for the golds and the silvers.”

I bit my tongue over the retort that those “piddly” packets had taken me the better part of a month of arguing with Angus to perfect, and continued to jot down his demands. Once he'd finished, he sighed. “And for heaven's sakes, Girl, put on proper shoes before Edward and I get into the office, will you?”

I glanced around, but Angus was nowhere to be seen. “How did you know that—­?”

“I didn't, but you just confirmed it.”

Damn.

Thankfully, Angus just chuckled. “Proper shoes,” he said, and hung up.

I dug into the bottom drawer of my desk for the pair of plain black flats I kept on hand. As long as nobody came too near my feet, which had been sweating a little in the heat that morning, everything would be fine. Feet shod, I headed across the office to where Asiv and Guy shared a glassed-­in office. Asiv, as usual, was tilted back in his office chair, asleep. Guy sat behind his mahogany monster of a desk, his hands steepled as he regarded something on his computer screen. I tapped on the door; he straightened.

“Hey,” he said once I'd entered. “Something up?”

“You haven't heard?” I rolled my eyes for emphasis. “Angus scored a meet with Edward Davenport. And since you're not blowing this joint for a few more hours, you get to sit in on it.”

“Fantastic.” Guy's lips quirked up in a smile. “Does that mean you have paperwork for me?”

“Millennium packet.” I handed over a thick manila demo folder. Edward Davenport would naturally get the one in the slick black binding, presentation-­perfect. “You'll want to look over that before the meeting. Review the numbers. The usual.”

Guy rose to his full height to take the packet from me. Standing, he towered over me—­and everybody in the office. Actually, sitting in his office chair, he was almost of a height with me. Nobody would ever consider me tall. Diminutive, maybe. Elfin was how one ex-­boyfriend had described me.

I preferred “short.”

“Are you coming to my going-­away party tonight?” Guy asked, not looking at me as he paged through the packet. His hair came down his forehead and over his stylish glasses. The sleeves of his seersucker dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows. He looked like exactly what he was: a trust-­fund boy idling the days away in publishing.

On the side of the room, Asiv let out a snort in his sleep.

I bit my lip. Hang out with my coworkers outside of the office? You couldn't have paid me enough, even if Guy was the only nice one in the office.

“I'm sorry,” I said, twisting my fingers together behind my back. “I'm behind on work.”

“Really?” And this time Guy did look up from the paperwork to chuckle at me. “Can't get away for one night?”

If I could, I definitely wasn't going to spend an evening with my coworkers. So I smiled at Guy and prepared for my retreat. “Come say bye before you leave, will you?” I asked him, and before he could answer, I turned and left.

B
Y THE TIME
Edward Davenport descended on the offices of Mirror Reality, every spare inch had been scrubbed and polished until the shine on the chrome wall panels threatened to give me a headache. Angus paced like a general surveying his troops. In truth, he was the furthest thing from a general, being stoop-­shouldered and a little bit pigeon-­toed. He made up for the former with expensive Italian suits and the latter with expensive Italian shoes.

Angus P. Vanderfeld was nothing if not classy.

The phones rang once: the signal that Edward Davenport had arrived. Since my desk wasn't anywhere near the route they would take to the meeting room, I hunkered down to look over some client requests.

I jumped about three feet into the air when a shadow fell over the desk.

“Hello.”

The media hadn't done Edward Davenport justice, I saw when I looked up. Dashing, I thought right away. He was in his mid-­forties—­though you wouldn't know it apart from laugh lines alongside crystalline blue eyes—­and he wore an Italian suit every bit as expensive as Angus's, only he filled his much more nicely. His teeth were slightly crooked, but on such a handsome, rugged face, it was only endearing.

And he was smiling right at me.

“I'm Eddie,” he said, holding out a hand.